About

Creators for Creators is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization intended to encourage, support, and promote original works through grants and education. The grant is a work in progress that will evolve to fit the needs of the recipient and the industry at large.

Comic books are one of the most vibrant art forms in the world, and it is important that creators both know their worth and have the freedom to create.

The goal of the Creators for Creators grant is to help pave the way for the next generation of comics creators by supporting their work financially and through mentorship, as well as providing opportunities for their creations to reach a wide audience. We plan to give $30,000 to a single cartoonist or writer/artist duo in order to support the creation of a new and original work of a length between sixty-four and one hundred pages over the course of a single year. The recipient will be selected by committee according to rigorous criteria.

In addition to the monetary support, the recipient of the grant will have access to mentorship from the experienced creators involved with Creators for Creators. Mentorship will cover almost every aspect of the comic-creating experience. The goal is to give the recipient a firm foundation in the creative, business, legal, and financial areas of the comics business.

The recipient has total control over how and where they choose to publish their work once it is completed, whether they choose to submit it to a creator-owned publisher or release it themselves in any format. Iron Circus Comics and Image Comics have both pledged to support the recipient by publishing their work, if the recipient so chooses. No matter their choice, the recipient retains all rights to their work.

Finally, CreatorsforCreators.org will become a resource for the comics industry intended to educate creators by way of testimonials, advice, and more from established creators.

Applicants for the grant must be at least eighteen years old. Submission guidelines and applications are available on our Submissions page.

Image Comics: Image Comics is a comic book and graphic novel publisher founded in 1992 by a collective of best-selling artists. Image has since gone on to become one of the largest comics publishers in the United States. Image currently has five partners: Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino. It consists of five major houses: Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline, Skybound, and Image Central. Image publishes comics and graphic novels in nearly every genre, sub-genre, and style imaginable. It offers science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, crime fiction, historical fiction, humor and more by the finest artists and writers working in the medium today. For more information, visit imagecomics.com.

Iron Circus Comics: Iron Circus Comics is Chicago’s largest alternative comics publisher. Owned and operated by C. Spike Trotman, ICC was founded in the spring of 2007 to publish the print edition of Spike’s webcomic, the eccentric and acclaimed “Templar, Arizona.” It has since gone on to revitalize the small press world with collaborative anthologies like the Smut Peddler collections, “The Sleep of Reason,” and “New World,” as well as creator-owned works like EK Weaver’s “The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal” and Sophie Campbell’s “Shadoweyes.” Dedicated to publishing strange and amazing comics, amplifying unique voices, and giving artist a fair deal, ICC has blazed the trail for the small-press Kickstarter renaissance, inventing the now-standard creator bonus model and normalizing the pre-order project for small and mid-sized publishers.

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Creators for Creators is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization intended to encourage, support, and promote original works through grants and education.